Community in Disarray

Among Shipibo-Konibo in the Peruvian Amazon, Facebook has become a lively space for interaction—one that Shipibos aspire to shape into a community-centered space for sharing news about kin and community life. Drawing on ethnographic in-person fieldwork from 2018 to 2024 and digital ethnography, this talk examines how Shipibos’ aspirations collide with
Facebook’s profit-driven logic and algorithmic architecture. This talk examines how Shipibos’ efforts to make Facebook a community-centered space are shaped—and sometimes curtailed—by two forces: Facebook’s algorithms, which flatten Shipibo communication genres into metrics of engagement, and the enduring social worlds Shipibos bring to the platform,
including migration, generational tensions, and the racializing gaze of non-Indigenous Peruvian (“mestizos”). At its core, this talk asks what happens when a community’s aspirations for connection meet a platform built not for community, but for profit.

Jennifer Sierra is a Wolf Humanities Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania and a President's Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Jennifer earned her Ph.D. in linguistic anthropology from the University of Michigan, where she also completed a graduate certificate in digital studies.